


These are what they call hard feelings

by StrikerEureka



Series: Precious metals [2]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demon Shane Madej, Demons, Developing Relationship, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Ghost Hunters, Hand Jobs, M/M, Nightmares, Paranormal, Relationship Negotiation, Sharing a Bed, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 04:15:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14584731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikerEureka/pseuds/StrikerEureka
Summary: With the truth about Shane's demonic origin out, Ryan and Shane have to learn how to make their developing relationship work, and what the future holds for them and Unsolved.Shane’s thumb starts rubbing slow circles against his skin. “I hate to break it to you but half the places we’ve been haven’t had so much as a wayward spirit in them. Not even a little chipmunk ghost.”“So you’re just acting like a psycho for fun.”“That and you tend not to be as afraid when I give you shit and call spirits assholes.”Ryan can’t stop the smile that follows Shane’s statement. “That’s… really weirdly sweet.”“That’s me. Ol Sweet Demon Shane, they call me, down below.” Ryan rolls his eyes.





	These are what they call hard feelings

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't read this if this is about you or your friends.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who commented and left kudos. You guys have been awesome cheerleaders :) I wouldn't be surprised if a third part cropped up soon (with a heavier supernatural overtone; I have ideas). Special thanks to Noora, of course. 
> 
> I can't think of anything that needs to be tagged, but if you see something, let me know.

Ryan worries that he should feel more anxious than he does. He tries his best not to hype himself up too much or think too hard about Shane being what he is. But then he worries that he’s not thinking about it _enough_. Not that there’s ever a moment where it’s not front and center, or lurking in the background, no matter what he does. It’s always there, always with him, making him absolutely crazy. He’s losing sleep and sanity all in one fell swoop. 

As a result, he’s constantly over-caffeinated and jumpy. He’s earned more Starbucks stars in the past week than he has in the past month. He’s living off of coffee, determination, and selective compartmentalization. He thinks more than a couple of his coworkers are getting ready to stage an intervention on him. 

Ryan comes in late, for the fourth day in a row, and Quinta stops him before he can get to his computer, plucking the Starbucks cup right out of his hand.

“Thanks!” she says, showing off her perfectly straight teeth when she smiles broadly at him.

“That’s—“

“So sweet of you, Ryan.” She pats his cheek, already taking a sip as she leaves the room, notebook tucked up under her arm and a pen stuck in the poof of her bun.

Ryan stands in the hallway, watching her go, flexing his empty hand, feeling like he should probably laugh but his face is too tired to go through the motions. He sighs, avoiding Shane’s pointed gaze as he turns and heads for the break room. He’s not getting through this day with anything short of a caffeine IV drip. 

He’s not surprised when Shane appears a moment later. They haven’t spoken overly much at work, and he knows it’s raising suspicions and driving office gossip. He’s heard it all before: they’re fighting, they’re in love, they’re in a threeway relationship with the new intern. 

That last one might actually have been a legitimate rumor, last fall; it’s neither here nor there, now. 

The point is that they’re not communicating much, even though they’re not fighting, or even really ignoring each other. Shane has been giving him space, since that day at the beach, and Ryan is grateful for it, because it’s a lot to get his fucking head around. He’s not afraid of Shane and he’s not uncomfortable with him either, but he feels like he doesn’t know how to act around him, in front of other people, anymore.

He’s second-guessing every single thing that he says and does. Everything feels conspicuous now. He’s constantly afraid of giving Shane’s secret away, and it’s making him feel like he’s rapidly losing his shit.

He puts a k-cup in the Keurig and turns, holding back a sigh, rubbing a hand over his face. The bristle of his facial hair is harsher than he’d expected.

“You’re starting to look like a lumberjack,” Shane tells him.

He rubs his palm against his jaw again. He really needs to shave. “Nah, it’s my Bigfoot beard. Trying to attract one.” 

Shane holds his arms out. “Here I am.” Ryan smiles, feeling it pull at his left cheek. When he doesn’t say anything, though, Shane leans his hip against the counter. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Just tired. I’m sleeping like shit.”

“Is it me?” Ryan looks at him as he gestures between the two of them. “Is it this?” Ryan doesn’t know what to say to that, so he shakes his head. Shane steps closer, keeping his voice low, making Ryan aware of just how public this conversation is, how exposed they are right now. He scratches nervously at his jaw again. “You don’t owe me anything, Ry,” Shane says, ducking his head until Ryan meets his eyes. “What I feel is what I feel. If you don’t—“

“I like you,” Ryan rushes in a whisper that comes out louder than he’d meant for it to. He glances at the doorway but they’re still alone in the break room; his hands are shaking again. Shane doesn’t stop watching him. “I do like you,” Ryan says again, quieter this time, and Shane’s face softens with a smile.

Fingertips bump up against his on the countertop. Ryan feels like he should pull his hand away but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to act around you. I feel like people know.”

“Know about _me_ or know that we’re a little gay for each other? Because, I gotta be honest, I think there’s a betting pool centered around the two of us.”

“What?” Ryan asks. Shane grins and Ryan reaches up a hand and pushes against his chest. Normally, Shane would waver a bit at the touch, but he doesn’t move at all, this time. Ryan makes a fist with his hand and presses it against Shane’s sternum, feeling a heartbeat that he doesn’t know whether or not to trust.

Shane’s long, warm fingers curl around the crook of his elbow, letting Ryan push against him until his arm shakes.

“If you don’t want people to know—“

“I don’t care about that,” Ryan says. He really doesn’t. He’s never been into another guy the way he is Shane, but it doesn’t bother him. He’s always just thought that he likes people, and now, apparently, it’s gone a bit beyond that in a way he’d never envisioned. But it still doesn’t bother him.

It’s Shane, not the vessel. 

“We are kind of married, aren’t we?” Ryan asks, though it doesn’t feel much like a question. He flattens his palm over Shane’s sternum.

“Just a little.”

Ryan lets out a shaky sigh, bringing both hands up to rub his eyes under his glasses. They feel like sandpaper.

“What’s going on?” Shane asks him, quietly.

“I’m sleeping like shit,” Ryan says, opting for the truth. “I have nightmares constantly. And it makes me sound like such a little baby to say, but it—“ he cuts himself off when Sara walks into the break room, looking down at her phone.

Ryan straightens and Shane lets his hand fall away from Ryan’s elbow. But they’re standing close enough that Ryan can feel Shane’s breath on his face, so regardless, when Sara looks up, she glances at them and then does a double take and stops abruptly.

None of them move for a second, and Ryan’s over-caffeinated heart is beating like a rabbit’s against his ribcage. Shane looks vaguely uninterested in the room at large and not at all uncomfortable like Ryan suddenly feels. He folds his arms against his chest, trying to keep his shaky hands from sight. It probably looks about as casual as it feels.

Sara turns one of her feet to balance on the side of it, twisting a bit in place, making her purple curls bounce around her ears. She purses her lips for a second before sucking in a breath through her teeth.

“Just need some coffee,” she says, gesturing with her phone to the space between them.

Ryan looks down at the mug sitting in the Keurig, freshly brewed and steaming and calling his name. He reaches for it but Shane wraps an arm around his shoulders and turns him away from it.

“It’s all yours.”

“That’s my mug,” Ryan says, trying in vain to turn back.

Shane smiles at Sara and leads Ryan out of the room with a firm grip. “Come on,” he says, “let’s get some air.”

The last thing that Ryan wants to do right now is go for a walk. His knees are wobbly and his nerves are shot, he just wants to collapse at his desk and pick through his Unsolved notes and try to salvage what he can of the season. 

But he doesn’t fight when Shane leads him all the way out onto the sidewalk. They’re too far away from the beach or a park, or anywhere that Ryan would like to go to have the conversation that he knows is coming. He allows Shane to lead him out to the alley behind the building, into the hazy morning sun. He should have worn a hoodie today, he thinks as he folds his arms against the slight chill and squints at Shane.

“Pretty sure Sara’s gonna win the betting pool, now,” Ryan says.

Shane’s hand is still on his bicep, and he squeezes gently. “How long has it been since you’ve slept?” he asks.

“I sleep.” 

“Like you slept in the Sallie House?” 

“Like I slept on the Queen Mary,” Ryan deadpans at him.

“In fifteen minute increments and convinced that a ghost is going to poke you in the face?”

Ryan shrugs his hand off and turns to pace a couple of feet away. He stares down the mouth of the alley, watching the cars pass by for a moment, fingers linked together behind his neck. Shane waits him out.

“I think I traumatized myself permanently by reading those _Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark_ books when I was a kid.” The corner of Shane’s mouth lifts but it’s not much of a smile. He blows out a breath and continues, “I’ve always been prone to nightmares. It’ll pass.” Ryan hopes he sounds more certain than he feels. There’s a pit in his stomach and it feels like the moment before the first hill on a roller coaster, but the drop never comes. He’s not sure that he wants it to because he doesn’t know what comes after that.

When he turns back, Shane has his hands in the front pockets of his skinny jeans and he’s looking at the crack in the pavement between them. There’s a tuft of dead grass poking up out of it that Shane runs the sole of his shoe over a few times.

“It might be more than that.”

The breath that Ryan takes is cold and it burns the inside of his nose and hurts the whole way down into his lungs. 

“You mean because of you?”

“Demonic influence can cause night terrors,” Shane tells him quietly.

Ryan’s teeth chatter momentarily before he clenches his jaw. He looks up and down the alley, even though he knows they’re alone, before he steps closer to Shane.

“I’m not possessed, though.”

“It’s not always about possession,” Shane says, shaking his head. 

Ryan’s heart hammers so hard it feels like he’s about to give birth to a chestburster. “What’s it about, then?”

“Proximity. Acceptance.” Shane shakes his head and kicks at the ground with the toe of his shoe. He takes a breath, looking at Ryan, and then he shakes his head and closes his mouth again. “I don’t know, for sure. I’ve never revealed myself to someone, like this. But just being close to me is probably enough.”

Ryan shakes his head, swallowing the rush of saliva in his mouth. “I don’t have them when you’re around.”

Realistically, Ryan doesn’t have enough quantifiable data to properly support that statement, but he knows that he’s right. He remembers the dreams that started after the car accident and how they’d disappeared entirely whenever he fell asleep next to Shane. Since the truth came out, they’ve only spent one night together and that had been an accident. He’d fallen asleep on Shane’s couch, and even though he’d woken up alone, covered in a lumpy quilt, he still hadn’t dreamed anything, let alone had a nightmare.

Shane takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. 

“My presence is probably triggering some fight or flight thing in your lizard brain.”

“You mean my hindbrain is telling me you’re a predator and I need to run?”

The knot of Shane’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. Ryan tries not to stare. He counts to four before Shane says, “Probably.”

“Great.”

“I don’t know why it’d be better when you’re closer to me,” Shane tells him, running a hand up the back of his own head, setting his hair on end. “Seems like that’d make it worse.”

Ryan smiles tiredly at him. The fact that Shane knows almost as little as he does, about the situation, soothes some of Ryan’s frazzled and harried nerves. “Maybe it’s the acceptance.”

The look on Shane’s face makes something inside of Ryan ache so tangibly that he winces. Shane bites at his own lips. “Could be that.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Ryan says.

Shane pulls his hands from his pockets and he touches Ryan’s sides with them, skimming down to his hips. There aren’t many windows on the back of the building but they’re still fairly exposed, here, out in the open, where anyone could happen by. Ryan doesn’t really care if someone sees them, but whatever they’ve got between them is still so fragile and goddamn strange, he’s afraid that the slightest touch could shatter it. 

Ryan blows out a breath and lowers his forehead to Shane’s collarbone. He’s cold and he’s exhausted, and he just wants to not exist for a while. He closes his eyes for a moment when Shane’s nose nudges his temple, and then his warm, dry lips follow it. 

“I might be able to help.”

“How?”

Shane is so warm and Ryan feels drowsier every moment that he stands here with his eyes closed. He knows they’re going to have to go back inside and get back to work, and pretend like their lives haven’t just gotten super fucking weird—at least Ryan’s life, though he can’t imagine this feels normal for Shane either—but _fuck_ , he just wants to sleep.

“Probably not something we should talk about in public,” Shane murmurs, his cheek still touching the crown of Ryan’s head.

He’s right, of course. They shouldn’t be talking about _any_ of this where someone could overhear them, let alone mere feet from their workplace. Ryan straightens again and pushes his glasses up into his hair to knuckle his eyes. His vision is blurry when he looks at Shane again.

“You wanna come over, after work?” he asks.

“As long as you don’t trap me in your kitchen again.”

Ryan wheezes when he laughs. And when he slides his glasses back into place, Shane looks pleased with himself, smiling at Ryan with his hands folded behind his back. 

“I promise.”

Shane claps him on the shoulder, pressing his thumb in hard under Ryan’s collarbone. “Come on,” he says at length, his voice almost lost to the rush of traffic on the street behind them. Ryan wonders again, if what he’s learned about Shane is true. How this soft, gentle, giant of a person could really be the thing he’s spent the last ten years of his life absolutely terrified of.

Before he can move, the muted throb in Ryan’s forehead starts to ease. For a second he thinks he’s just imagining it, but the pressure in his head unmistakably lessens to a tolerable degree. His brow furrows as he looks at Shane.

“Did you just heal me?” he asks, stunned into a quiet sort of disbelief. 

Shane drops his hand and moves it uselessly, the gesture dismissive. “Yeah. Just take the edge off. It’s not really my forte.” 

“You saved me from a concussion,” he says as they cross the distance to the building’s back door. Shane saved him from more than that, he knows; he might have even saved his life. 

Shane holds the door for him and guides him through it with a hand on the small of his back. Ryan bites down on both of his lips to keep himself from smiling. He’s still lightheaded and sleep-deprived, and likely to walk into a wall, if left to his own devices, so he allows himself to be led.

When they get back to their office, Ryan makes an aborted move toward the break room. “I need coffee—“

“Tea,” Shane cuts him off, turning him by the shoulders and nudging him in the direction of their desks.

“There’s caffeine in tea.”

Shane pushes him hard enough that he almost trips over his own feet. “Go. Sit.”

Ryan ignores the looks Quinta sends him from over her computer monitor, and slumps down in his seat. The tremor in his hands is more visible without the cover of his cast, so he braces it hard against the edge of the desk while he wiggles the mouse to wake up his computer. 

He still has two episodes of Unsolved to plot and write, never mind record. Putting everything else aside, he takes a steadying breath and gets to work.

 

\--

 

Shane follows him home, after work. Ryan kind of thought that he’d have an hour or so to collect himself, and maybe clean up his apartment a little first; but Shane gets into his car and buckles his seatbelt before Ryan even has his door all the way open. Ryan is still stupidly tired, but the pulse of adrenaline, and a little bit of anxiety in his veins, keeps him alert and slightly on edge.

He doesn’t know what he’s so worried about. Or what he’s _most_ worried about, rather. He has plenty to worry about. And it’s making his palms feel sweaty and gross.

Ryan’s mind is racing with all of the things he still wants to talk to Shane about, all the questions that he has, and all of his concerns about literally every aspect of the future. It’s making his head start to pound again and he tries to shake it off. Shane pauses just inside the door and leans down to unlace his boots without comment; Ryan lifts his bag over his head, one handed, still wary of hurting his arm.

“That isn’t still bothering you, is it?” Shane asks as he straightens.

“What? No, not really,” Ryan says, nudging his shoes aside and heading into the kitchen. “Just used to being careful with it.”

Shane follows but hesitates at the threshold. Ryan turns back and watches as Shane examines the carpet line with a skeptical eye. He lifts one giant foot and sets it gingerly down on the linoleum, like a wary dog that has run into one too many screen doors. Ryan tries and fails not to laugh.

“Yuck it up, short stack.”

“Okay, beanpole.”

“We’ll see who’s laughing next time you want me to walk into a not-haunted house first.”

Ryan puts his hand to his heart. “You’d really make me walk headfirst into danger, knowing that I, a mere mortal, could have my spine ripped out by a vengeful spirit at any given moment?”

Shane stares at him for a moment before he says, flatly, “Yes.”

Ryan snorts and opens the refrigerator and grabs them each a bottle of water. He kind of wants to crack open one of the beers on the bottom shelf, but he also feels an oncoming serious conversation and he should probably be completely sober for it. Shane takes his bottle without question and follows Ryan back out to the living room where they collapse onto opposite ends of the couch.

Sitting cross-legged, facing Shane, Ryan picks at the label on his bottle while Shane twists the top off of his. He stops before he takes a drink and glances toward Ryan.

“You didn’t put any holy water in this, did you?”

He doesn’t sound entirely serious but Ryan still feels the tight twist of guilt in his belly at the words.

“I wouldn’t do that.” Ryan doesn’t think he has the right to feel offended but he does, a little bit, anyway. “Would that seriously hurt you?”

Shane takes a drink and recaps his bottle before setting it aside, slouching to get comfortable, his knees spread and fingers folded on his stomach. He turns his head against the back couch cushions and looks at Ryan.

“If you really want to see _Exorcist_ style vomiting, you can try it.”

“First of all, fuck you. Second of all, no thanks.”

Shane shrugs. “I’m just glad you didn’t go that route when you were testing me, the first time.”

Ryan rips off the label on his bottle, rolls it into a ball between his fingers, and tosses it at Shane. It lands on his chest and sticks there. 

“Even when I was scared out of my mind, I wouldn’t do something I thought would actually hurt you,” he says. “So fuck you again.”

Shane flicks the wadded up ball back at Ryan but it lands on the middle cushion between them.

“I didn’t really like the salt, either.”

“There’s not a shaker in the place,” Ryan promises. “Well, like, except for the one in the kitchen, but it’s been empty for like, three months.”

Shane huffs a laugh, looking more relaxed. He rocks his legs back and forth a bit, his shins just brushing the edge of the coffee table.

“Ry,” Shane says, quietly, drawing his attention upward again.

“Yeah?”

“Talk to me.”

Ryan shifts to lean his head against the back of the couch. His whole body is beginning to ache.

“I don’t even know where to start.”

And it’s the truth. It hasn’t even been two weeks since the day when Shane met him at the beach. Ryan’s head feels so full with everything that he wants to ask about or know, but now that he’s looking for a point to jump in at, he doesn’t know what to lead with. He rubs at his face and finds Shane still looking at him when he opens his eyes, his gaze soft.

“I’ll tell you whatever I can,” Shane says. “There’s not a lot that I don’t think I can say. Or shouldn’t say.”

“You probably weren’t supposed to tell me what you are,” Ryan ventures.

“True, but I didn’t tell you. You figured it out.”

Ryan blinks at him. “Seriously? That minor detail makes revealing the existence of _demons_ to a human okay?”

“You’ll find that loopholes are a demon’s best friend,” Shane says, offering him a cheeky grin that falls away again almost immediately.

Shane looks almost as tired as Ryan feels. “Do you sleep?”

“You’ve _seen_ me sleep. We’ve slept _together_.”

Ryan’s skin prickles hotly at the words. “Do you _need_ to?”

“No, but I like to. Same with eating. Human taste buds are incredible.”

“Fuck, this is so weird.”

Shane reaches out and sets his hand between them on the vacant cushion. Ryan only eyes it a moment before he threads his fingers between Shane’s.

“I like holding hands,” Shane tells him. Which, in retrospect, is something that Ryan probably could have put together on his own. He’s held hands with ex-girlfriends less than he’s held hands with Shane. “Especially little, dainty ones like yours.”

Ryan pinches the webbing between his fingers and Shane laughs. Silence settles between them for a bit, not at all uncomfortable or heavy, but almost sleepy. Like a hazy summer evening, thick and warm, and Ryan wants to sink into it. He wants things to go back to the way they were before. 

As always, Shane waits him out while Ryan stares at their hands and focuses on keeping his breathing even. It’s stupid but he kind of wants to cry a little, even if he’d rather the floor open up and swallow him whole than to do that in front of Shane, right now.

“What are we gonna do about Unsolved?” he finally forces himself to ask, the thing that’s been looming overhead for too long. It should have been one of the first things that Ryan asked, but he’s been too afraid to hear the answer.

But Shane is Shane, and he merely shrugs at the question. “I figured we’d go on as usual. Unless you didn’t want to do it anymore.”

“But you can _see_ everything.”

“I could see everything before.”

“Which explains why you’ve acted like a total lunatic in some places.”

Shane’s thumb starts rubbing slow circles against his skin. “I hate to break it to you but half the places we’ve been haven’t had so much as a wayward spirit in them. Not even a little chipmunk ghost.”

“So you’re just acting like a psycho for fun.”

“That and you tend not to be as afraid when I give you shit and call spirits assholes.”

Ryan can’t stop the smile that follows Shane’s statement. “That’s… really weirdly sweet.”

“That’s me. Ol Sweet Demon Shane, they call me, down below.” Ryan rolls his eyes.

“So… we can still—you still want to be on Unsolved?”

“If you’ve been thinking about replacing me with Brent, I will find him and suck his soul out through his mouth and eat it,” Shane tells him seriously.

Ryan laughs, loud and startled, and has to bury his face in the couch cushion. “You are fucking scary sometimes, you know that?”

“Yeah, but you know I’d never hurt you.”

“Why?” Ryan asks, turning his head so one of his eyes is visible again. 

“Why what?”

“ _Why?_ ” Ryan stresses. “Why me?”

“Why not you?” Shane asks. “I like everything about you. I don’t have to have one reason in particular.”

Ryan’s head pounds harder as his heart rate picks up again. He really shouldn’t find anything about Shane’s behavior or reasoning sweet or—fuck him—romantic, but he does.

“So what do we do on investigations, now?” he asks, steering the conversation toward slightly safer territory.

“What we did before, I guess. I didn’t let anything hurt you then and I won’t let anything hurt you now,” Shane tells him, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

This might not even be _slightly_ safer territory.

Ryan clears his throat. “What if I want you to tell me when something is near us?”

“Won’t that detract from the sincerity of the hunt?” 

“You just want to listen to me scream.”

“It is one of my favorite sounds.”

Heat creeps over Ryan’s face and he turns to look over the back of the couch, rather than at Shane. The fingers holding his own squeeze tighter so Shane probably sees his flush anyway, but Ryan doesn’t turn back. He might as well go for the heart of it and say what’s really been rattling his brain at night. Ryan has to swallow before he can speak.

“You said you loved me. Twice.”

A beat of silence passes and Ryan regrets even opening his mouth before Shane speaks again.

“Yes.”

“Did you mean it?”

“Both times.”

Ryan feels dizzy enough that he has to close his eyes and set his flushed cheek against his forearm, along the back of the couch. It’s too warm but he feels less exposed, and kind of like a toddler for feeling like he needs to hide from this. They should be able to speak about it. He’s an adult and so is Shane. More or less. 

“Ryan,” Shane says, shifting closer but letting go of his hand. Ryan misses it instantly, his fingers curling shut around nothing. “You don’t have to feel the same way. I don’t expect you to.”

“I like you. I _told_ you I like you.” Ryan doesn’t know if he loves Shane, yet. He knows that he was getting there, knows that’s what he was hoping for with every touch and smile and laugh. He’s gone on Shane. Even knowing what he really is, Ryan is still reaching out for him.

A hand settles on his shoulder blade and rubs for a second before moving to rest on his knee.

“I’ve been around for a long-ass time; I can wait. Even if you decide we’re better off like this, I’m okay with that. I just want to be around you.”

Ryan reaches out blindly and fists his hand in Shane’s shirt, pulling him close; Shane comes easily, moving onto the cushion that was between them. Ryan touches Shane’s stubbled jaw as he lifts his face from his forearm, and leans in. Shane meets him halfway, kissing him, hard and chaste. It lingers, and when Ryan breaks it, he moves his head to the side, so their noses don’t bump, and kisses him again, softer and a little wet. 

Shane’s hand on his knee moves to the bend of it and pulls them just a little bit closer. Ryan holds onto Shane’s neck and kisses him like he’s afraid that Shane will disappear if he stops. The push of Shane’s tongue against his own makes his stomach tense and warm, the feeling working its way lower. 

It’s the only time they’ve really kissed since the first time, in the car, on the side of the road. 

And it’s the first time Ryan has kissed him, knowing what he is. He doesn’t know if he thought maybe it would feel different, if he’d maybe be disgusted by it or hate it, or if it would make him want Shane any less. But he isn’t and he doesn’t. 

Fuck, he thinks he loves Shane.

When Ryan makes a noise that sounds both desperate and kind of like a sob, to his own ears, Shane breaks away and kisses him lightly again. Then again. Ryan takes hold of his ears and tries to bring him into another kiss, but Shane pulls out of it and kisses the corner of his mouth before biting his cheek.

“Ow—fucker. I’m not into being bitten,” Ryan tells him, swallowing his disappointment.

“You’ve never had _my_ bites, before,” Shane tells him, nudging Ryan’s head to the side and mouthing down his neck to his pulse, where he presses in with his teeth.

Ryan shudders, even as he tips his head away to offer access to his throat. 

“What are you, a fuckin’ vampire now, too?”

Shane sucks hard and wet at his neck. Ryan’s groan comes out more than a little strangled; he is seriously on his way to a fucking boner, right now. He grips Shane’s biceps with both hands.

“I’m not really into blood sacrifice, but—“ Ryan cuts off Shane’s mumbling against his neck with a light smack to the back of his head. Shane looks affronted when he meets Ryan’s gaze again. “Rude.”

Ryan’s smile feels shaky at best. “No biting and absolutely no blood.”

“But you’re just so tasty, Ryan,” Shane says, leaning in toward his neck with his mouth open.

Ryan stops him with a hand against his forehead. “Like my fear?”

Shane hums a sound that might be agreement. It makes Ryan want to squirm as the crook of his knee starts to sweat under the weight of Shane’s overly warm hand.

“Fuck,” he mutters, pushing at Shane until he sits back, putting a little distance between the two of them again. “Why are you always so goddamn hot?”

“Not so bad yourself,” Shane says, wiggling his eyebrows.

Ryan laughs and rubs at his face. “No, for real,” he says, raising the arm tucked between the two of them to rest the back of his hand to Shane’s sternum. The heat coming off of him is like holding his hand over a campfire, or bare skin on hot pavement in the middle of the summer.

“For real what?” Shane prompts when Ryan loses the thought, staring at his hand on Shane’s chest.

“Why are you so hot all the time?”

Shane scratches at his cheek before resettling his chin in his palm, elbow against the back of the couch. Ryan wants to feel the prickle of hair on his throat, where it’s growing a little too long. He lifts his hand and Shane takes hold of it before he can touch anything, curling their fingers together. 

“Hellfire,” he says, voice low and just a little bit raspy with the heaviness of his tone. The answer throws Ryan.

“What?”

Shane brings their connected hands up to tap against his chest. “The core of me,” he says, not offering much explanation but knowing full well that Ryan will get there on his own.

“Your core is made of _hellfire_?”

Shane shrugs one of his shoulders, looking almost blasé in his nonchalance. 

Ryan doesn’t really know what it means to be made of _hellfire_ , of all things, but he somehow doesn’t think that any explanation that Shane gives him is going to make that one any clearer. He seriously considers pressing but it’s one of the answers that he isn’t sure that he’s ready to hear; maybe it’s one of the ones that Shane won’t give.

If Ryan is completely honest with himself, he knows that if Shane weren’t so readily forthcoming with answers and information, Ryan probably wouldn’t be able to deal with any of this. And so far, he has never been dissatisfied with any answer Shane has given him. 

Knowing the truth, he’s more at ease with Shane than he ever thought would be possible. 

He looks up at Shane, feeling tired but not as awful as he has lately. It sits weirdly in his belly, the idea that he feels so comfortable with Shane, knowing full well what he is. It seems like it should be the opposite, like Shane should unnerve him or his presence should be unwelcome. 

Though, that’s possibly what the nightmares are; a warning from his primitive brain that Shane is a predator and needs to be avoided.

Ryan has stressed, more than once, over the idea that continuing his relationship with Shane is going to buy him a one-way ticket straight to hell. He’s far from ready to ask Shane anything about the afterlife, or god, or what’s going to happen to him—or any of them—when he dies. 

All he can really think is that Shane is good for him. He makes Ryan laugh harder than he ever has before, makes him feel safe, settles something that’s been aching in him for longer than he ever realized. He’s happy, if absolutely fucking exhausted.

“Smoke is gonna come billowing out of your ears if you keep thinking that hard,” Shane says, settling his other hand on Ryan’s thigh.

“Fucker.” Ryan huffs a laugh. He brings both hands up to rub at his face, pressing on his eyes hard enough that he’s still seeing spots when he opens them again.

Shane just watches him, something almost satisfied about the upward turn of his mouth. He looks soft and gentle and Ryan has to close his eyes again, for a moment. When he opens them, he clears his throat and Shane raises his brows, looking expectant.

“You said you could maybe help me with the nightmares,” he says, voice a little high-pitched with strain. The idea of sleeping through the night again, without waking up sweating through his shirt in sheer terror, seems like an impossible dream, from where he’s currently standing.

Shane nods; the evening light coming through the window glints oddly off of his glasses and Ryan wonders suddenly if he actually needs them to see or not. He bites back the question, because he wants an answer for this one more. Desperately more.

“I don’t know if it’ll work.” 

“At least pretend like you’re confident in your cure, while you’re presenting it.”

Shane rolls his eyes, running his hand over Ryan’s belly, resting his knuckles on his skin where his shirt rides up. Ryan’s stomach muscles contract compulsively.

“I feel like you’re gonna start freaking out. So let me finish before you shoot me with your holy water bullets or what have you.” Ryan opens his mouth to respond, offended, but Shane cuts him off before he can get started. “In a possession, a link is created between the demon and the host.” 

Ryan fights a shiver at the words. “Have you ever possessed anyone?”

“Ryan—“

“I know you said no interruptions but I think this one is above the rule, here.”

Shane exhales heavily through his nose, pinching his eyes shut and rubbing at his nose with one hand, knocking his glasses askew.

“I haven’t possessed anyone in a very long time,” he says after a moment, his voice a little tight. 

“Could you possess _me_ , if you wanted?”

“I don’t want to and I wouldn’t.”

“ _Could_ you?”

“Ryan—“ Shane cuts himself off with a frustrated sound. “I can’t possess more than one vessel at a time. I’d have to leave this body to enter another.”

Ryan can feel his anxiety creeping up the back of his throat. This might have been one of the things he doesn’t need an answer to and he regrets asking. He waits while Shane rights his glasses and returns his cheek to his palm. “Can we maybe talk about that, later? The part where you possessed other people?”

“If you want.”

“Okay.” He tries to refocus. “Okay. So, you link up to a human like a fuckin’ Gameboy and transfer yourself in there?”

“Please stop theorizing, terribly.”

“Sorry.”

Shane pulls his hand from under Ryan’s shirt to cover his mouth. Ryan bites down on his lips. 

“With a link, I could cause night terrors. But I could probably also stop them with one.” He waits for Ryan to nod, since he still has his fingers clamped over Ryan’s mouth. “I think it would desensitize you to my presence. I’d always be able to sense you, too. I’d know if you were ever in trouble.”

Ryan’s heart starts to beat faster. When Shane’s hand falls away, all he can say is a breathy, “Oh.”

Shane shakes his head, dismissively. “Forget it.”

“No,” Ryan says, reaching down to grasp Shane’s wrist, afraid suddenly that he’s going to pull away. Shane hasn’t shied from telling him anything so far, and Ryan isn’t going to let him start now. “Tell me how. How do you link yourself to me without a possession?”

“By marking you.”

“Marking me—“

“Your soul.”

Somehow, Ryan knew that’s where this was headed, but it still makes his heart beat so hard that it feels like it’s rattling his ribcage. He breathes out a breath that isn’t at all steady; Shane turns his hand in Ryan’s grip and gives it a gentle squeeze. 

“Would that, like, damn my soul or anything?” he asks, opening his eyes again. 

Shane’s head shakes minutely. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“You said you’ve done crossroads deals,” Ryan protests. “That’s like using your soul as currency, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know shit about the other end of it. I don’t know anything about—I don’t know.” Shane sounds almost irritated until he speaks again. “I wouldn’t ask for your soul; we wouldn’t be making a deal. It’d be like a stamp.” He lifts his hand and pans it to the side, even though Ryan doesn’t let go. “’Property of Shane Madej. Hands off.’”

Ryan can’t help it when he laughs.

“So it’d be the demon equivalent of a dog pissing on a tree to mark its territory?”

“I only piss on my very favorite trees.”

Ryan looks skyward and then closes his eyes, shaking his head a bit. “How do you not know if this could taint my soul or not?”

Shane sighs heavily. “Because I don’t know, Ry. I’ve never had the opportunity to shoot the shit with the celestial beings upstairs, before.”

“So my soul could actually be in peril, if I let you mark it?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

Ryan looks down at their hands, in the space between them, and touches his fingertips to Shane’s palm.

“Now this is a moral quandary public school never prepared me for.”

Shane huffs a quiet laugh and takes hold of his fingers. “Your idea of eternity and my idea of eternity are considerably different—“

“I know what ‘forever’ means, you jackwagon.”

“If marking your soul did damage it in any way, then I would keep it when you die.” Ryan’s next inhale burns all the way down into his lungs. “I wouldn’t let you go to hell.”

So much of the past couple years of Ryan’s life feels like some shit he could read in self-insert fanfiction. He grew up a relative nobody, got an awesome job, travels for work, and gets paid to investigate haunted locations with his best friend-turned-love-interest, who just so happens to also be a demon from hell. Sometimes it doesn’t feel real; particularly the past few weeks, since that last part came to light.

This might take the cake, though, for most unbelievable moment of his life. 

Shane waits silently, watching Ryan’s fingers, still against his palm. He doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. 

Ryan is so goddamn tired. He wracks his brain and tries to think this through. Really, though, he knows it all boils down to whether or not he trusts Shane with his soul. And maybe he’s more than a little stupid and naïve because his immediate thought is _yes_ , with no follow-up. 

He closes his fingers around Shane’s wrist and waits for him to meet his gaze.

“Do it.”

Ryan counts his own breaths as he waits for Shane to respond. Three of them.

“Seriously?” 

“Should I be saying no, right now?”

“I’d never hurt you,” Shane says, repeating what has become something of a mantra for him over the past however many days since his reveal. Ryan believes him when he says it; he doesn’t really need to hear it, but it settles something in his brain, regardless. 

“Do it,” he repeats, forcing more confidence into the words.

Shane pauses. “It might... hurt.”

He hopes that he sounds braver than he feels when he says, “Just do it. I trust you.” 

Shane’s forehead bunches like he’s in pain. He holds Ryan’s gaze as he scoots closer on the couch, drawing his knee up until it’s overlapping Ryan’s. He uses the arm he’d had resting along the back of the couch to pull Ryan in by the shoulders. Their noses bump as Shane sets his other hand in the middle of Ryan’s chest again. 

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he murmurs before he closes his eyes.

Ryan’s heartbeat kicks up another notch as he watches and waits for something to happen. The seconds begin to drag slowly by before the pressure of Shane’s hand begins to increase, if only slightly. Ryan just tries to breathe. He feels like he should close his eyes, but he can’t; he’s watching Shane’s face, tense with concentration, but otherwise unmoving.

Although he can’t pinpoint the moment it began, a dark glow starts to emanate from Shane’s closed eyes. Ryan watches the black haze that spreads out under his lashes, moving almost like static. Ryan’s heart leaps into overdrive and he clenches his teeth, pinching his eyes shut, as he waits for some inevitable burst of pain that never comes.

It lasts only a few seconds before the pressure of Shane’s palm eases and then he feels the warm, dry press of Shane’s lips against his own. Ryan startles and Shane fucking laughs, breathy and quiet, like the absolute dick that he is.

“You fucker,” Ryan rasps, shoving at his chest. Shane doesn’t let him get too far, pulling him into another kiss. “You just about scared the shit out of me.”

“Will you quit talking when I’m trying to kiss you?” Shane murmurs against the corner of his mouth.

Ryan fists a hand in the front of his shirt and kisses him back, hard enough to feel the press of Shane’s teeth against his lips. 

“You just marked my _soul_ , I think I’m allowed to freak out a little.”

“Nuh uh,” Shane tells him, kissing him again, slower this time, their lips starting to dampen. “No freaking out.” Shane’s tongue pushes into his mouth and Ryan sucks on it just to hear him groan. The fingers in his hair tighten, pulling at his scalp and making his dick twitch a little. “It’s like a tracking beacon. I’ll always be able to sense you, now.”

“That’s fuckin’ creepy,” Ryan groans, bringing a hand up to rub at his eye. “Why are you always so consistently creepy?”

Shane points to himself and says slowly, “Demon.”

Ryan stares at him, unimpressed. “If I laugh here, will you feel better about the fact that your jokes are weak as fuck?”

“Maybe.”

“Too bad. I want you to think about what you’ve done.”

Shane pouts his bottom lip and puts on a ridiculous pair of puppy eyes. Ryan digs one of the throw pillows his mom got him out from between his back and the arm of the couch and smothers it against Shane’s face. Shane falls back in a mess of flailing limbs, and Ryan goes with him, brandishing the pillow when Shane gets a knee in between them.

“Brutal,” Shane huffs, taking his glasses off and setting them on the coffee table. Ryan drops the pillow and sits back on his heels, trying to ignore the position they’ve ended up in. Shane doesn’t seem to notice that Ryan is kneeling between his thighs.

“You hungry?”

“Always.”

“Thai or fear?”

“What?” Shane asks, lifting his head off the couch cushion.

“Thai or,” Ryan gestures to himself, “fear. I could watch a couple of jump scare videos on youtube, read some creepypasta, a couple of urban legends. Really serve it up, to you.”

Shane blinks at him and for a moment Ryan thinks maybe this is an off limits area of the things they’ve discussed. But then Shane pushes himself up on his elbows and sits up, pulling Ryan in with an arm around his shoulders. Ryan tries and fails not to smile, leaving Shane to mostly kiss his teeth, when he leans in.

“I appreciate the thought, but I like my fear organic,” Shane murmurs as Ryan runs a hand through his hair, down to the back of his neck.

“Fuckin’ hipster.”

Shane wheezes a laugh. “Thai, please.”

Ryan nods, kissing him again, longer and sweeter, until Ryan’s legs start to go numb from kneeling like he is. He almost stumbles over the coffee table when he does stand and Shane laughs at him like the dick that he is.

He touches his chest as he aimlessly paces the living room, placing their order on his phone, imagining that he can feel the invisible brand that Shane has put on him. He doesn’t think he’s deluding himself when he tells himself that he feels better than he has since Shane first kissed him, weeks ago.

 

\--

 

Ryan is nodding off for the third time when Shane finally nudges him and says, “Go to bed.”

Ryan shifts, pushing himself upright and shaking his head. “I’m good.”

“You know your brain will shut down on you if you don’t sleep enough.”

“I’m not sure I trust you with scientific facts.”

“Ryan.”

“What?” 

Shane cups his cheek and kisses his temple. “Go to bed.”

The idea of it is almost novel at this point. Ryan used to love sleeping, before his Shane-induced nightmares started taking over. It was his second favorite activity, right behind a nice, slow fuck. He clenches his eyes and stretches, avoiding that thought like the plague.

“Fine,” he says, admitting defeat. 

He shuts the TV off and pushes himself to his feet. It’s late and the whole apartment is dark, save for the light in the kitchen. Shane looks soft and unassuming, if overwhelmingly huge, sitting on his couch. He towers over Ryan when he stands, groaning as his back pops.

Not for the first time, Ryan wonders how much of what Shane says and does and his reactions to things are force of habit from living the life of a human since infancy. There are still _so many_ things that Ryan wants to ask him. All he can hope is that Shane will continue to answer.

“Want me to come tuck you in?”

“You wanna stay?” Ryan blurts without thinking too much about it. 

Shane’s eyebrows creep up his forehead. “Don’t you want to see if the link works?”

“Well, obviously, but I mean,” Ryan clears his throat and ruffles his own hair with a nervous hand. “I can figure that out tomorrow, if you stay tonight.” Saying that isn’t difficult but he feels weirdly open right now, raw and exposed, and it’s making him antsy. He wants Shane to stay but he isn’t going to beg him.

“I’ll stay,” Shane says.

Ryan lets out a quiet breath. “Okay. Cool.”

“Cool,” Shane repeats, his tone a little mocking, but the look on his face is a pleased one.

Nothing Ryan owns is big enough to fit Shane’s frame. He tells himself it’s not weird when Shane strips down to his boxer-briefs and climbs into bed with him. 

It’s not weird. It’s really not. Ryan is only overthinking it because he wants Shane and right now they’re so close together that Ryan can feel his breath on his face, and Shane is practically naked beside him. He’s half afraid that Shane is going to tell him to turn around so he can little spoon him again.

Shane doesn’t, though. He settles down and closes his eyes, his breathing quickly evening out. Ryan hates him a little for how easily he seems to fall asleep, but also realizes that it’s probably part of his supernatural nature that allows him to. 

Ryan shuts his eyes and tries to clear his mind. “G’night,” he whispers.

There’s no verbal response from Shane, but a hand creeps over his hip and up under his shirt to settle on bare skin. Ryan smiles tiredly, even as he drifts off. 

He doesn’t dream, but he wasn’t expecting to, either.

 

\--

 

As much as Ryan likes Shane and wants to spend time with him, he does still wind up sleeping alone a lot. Probably more than he wants to, if he’s being honest with himself; and fuck knows he’s being more of that, lately. Shane never suggests it but Ryan figures that’s all part of him giving Ryan space. The only issue with that is that it’s more space than he wants.

He wants less and less with every passing day. Shane starts drifting closer and closer without Ryan having to tell him.

 

\--

 

They film an entire season of Ruining History before Ryan really gets back into the swing of things with Unsolved. The accident and the events that followed derailed a lot of things for Ryan. And while their higher-ups and fans alike have been understanding and patient with him, he knows that people are getting antsy. They have to finish the season.

Without the Axe Murder House, Ryan has to pull another haunted location out of his ass for them to investigate. He manages to get them into Alcatraz without too much difficulty, and then they’re scrambling to get the crew together by the weekend. He has to get everything shot, edited, and ready to air before the new season starts, and he is feeling the fucking pressure.

 

\--

 

It still isn’t particularly warm in the Bay. The ferry ride over is frigid. Between the choppy water and the wind whipping rain over the deck, Ryan’s cold and damp before they even make it to the island. 

“You look like you may have drowned on the way over,” Shane says, turning his camera on him when they stop to set up.

“It’s the new look I’m going for,” Ryan says flatly, pushing his limp hair off of his forehead and tugging the beanie he’d smartly hidden away in his backpack down to cover his ears.

“Drowned rat?”

“Drown _you,_ ” Ryan mutters as he zips his bag up again.

“Oh, baby, talk dirty to me,” Shane grins, lifting his eyebrows before turning to pan around. 

They’ve arrived early for a tour, unable to shut down the Island completely until nighttime for their investigation. But they aren’t going to get any good establishing shots if it keeps raining like it is. It’s cold and wet and windy and Ryan isn’t going to sleep a fucking wink in here tonight.

“Tell the people where we are today, Ry.”

“The terribly-insulated Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. AKA the Rock.”

Shane turns the camera on himself. “We’re here to find our old buddy, Al Capone.”

“Right. He spent four and a half years of his life in one of these cells,” Ryan says, gesturing around vaguely, before looking back at the camera. “He actually started going crazy here.”

“Because of the ghosts?” Shane asks, grin evident in his voice.

“Because the syphilis had gotten to his brain.”

Shane sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Yikes.”

“That’s one word for it.”

Shane looks at him over the camera when he says, “Always wrap it before you tap it, fellas.”

Ryan huffs a laugh and shakes his head and Shane bumps their shoulders together. Ryan stands a little closer than he probably should, taking advantage of Shane’s unnatural body heat to warm himself up, while they wait for their tour to start. He tries not to jump when Shane’s hand worms its way up under his hoodie and shirt to press against the small of his back. It feels good, but the touch makes it hard to focus when he has to start paying attention to the information they’re being given about where they can and can’t go. 

Still, he doesn’t pull away and neither does Shane.

 

\--

 

They’re not entirely alone in the prison, once the last ferry leaves for the night. There are a handful of guards that are present, but out of sight, and two people from their own crew, offering camera and sound support. And of course, Shane is with him. He’d been correct in the assumption that Shane being present would make him feel less afraid, brasher and almost silly, like they’d been toward the end of the night at Old Alton Bridge. 

Shane makes him braver, he always has. And if tonight is different, it’s only because he knows, without question, that he is safe.

However, now he finds that he can’t stop watching Shane for his reaction to everything. Every time they turn a corner, every time Shane looks into a cell or up along the catwalk to the upper floors, Ryan’s attention is hyper focused on him. It sets him a little on edge that Shane can sense things that he can’t, but he doesn’t give anything away, either. His expressions and his tone of voice give Ryan absolutely nothing.

Every creak and groan and whisper of wind makes him want to turn to Shane and ask him if that was anything. 

Shane is as unaffected as always.

After doing some solo EVP work in solitary, they sit on the floor in a cell with reports of activity. Sounds of movement, disembodied voices, the usual paranormal things. There isn’t much room, and Shane has to bend his legs a little to fit properly. 

“They certainly weren’t building these things with comfort in mind,” Shane says as he tries and fails to make himself comfortable. His feet touch the opposing wall.

“I don’t think their top priority was accommodating the comforts of people built like Gumby.” 

They’re alone for the moment with just a camera set up in the doorway of the cell. Ryan turns the spirit box over in his hands a few times, dragging his thumbnail over the ridges in the on/off button. He hasn’t asked Shane if there’s any validity to the spirit box and he doesn’t know if he wants his hopes dashed or not.

“You gonna use that?” Shane asks, tipping his head back against the wall to watch him. 

Ryan taps his fingers against it a few times. “Are we alone in here?” he asks, addressing it to the room at large, but staring at Shane in the dark as he does. Shane just blinks slowly at him.

Ryan heaves a sigh and turns the spirit box on, setting it down on the floor between their legs, and listening as the mashed-up radio frequencies fill the small cell. It’s almost too loud for Ryan to handle. Shane pinches his eyes shut and shakes his head. He’s never seemed outright bothered by the noise before and Ryan worries suddenly that it’s hurting him somehow.

“You’re going to annoy a ghost into showing itself,” Shane says, blinking and rubbing at his temples.

“I can turn it off.”

Shane shakes his head and nudges the toe of his boot against Ryan’s side. _I’m fine,_ the gesture says.

Ryan nods at him and then asks, “Is anyone here with us?” He strains to listen, trying to hear anything in the jumble of electronic nonsense pouring out from between them. “My name’s Ryan and that’s Shane; can you say our names?”

A second passes and there’s a sound like _no_ but Ryan can’t be sure.

“Were you an inmate here?” Ryan asks.

Again, nothing.

“Do you have ghost syphilis?” Shane asks.

Ryan laughs and smacks ineffectually at Shane’s calf. “Don’t insult the ghosts.”

“Have you never heard of a condom?” Shane goes on.

“Dude,” Ryan says on the tail end of a wheeze. 

The box between them crackles and spits out something that sounds suspiciously like _fuck you_. Ryan stares at it and then flicks his gaze up to Shane’s heavily shadowed face. 

“It said ‘fuck you’,” he laughs.

Shane holds his arms out. “Oh, syphilis ghost, do you kiss your mother with that mouth? I certainly hope not; that’s disgusting.”

The box continues to filter through stations, rattling out a bunch of nothing for so long that Ryan can’t even stand the noise anymore. He picks up the spirit box and turns it off. The silence that follows is sudden and disconcerting. The floor is cold and the wall behind him isn’t any better. There’s a phantom throb in his right arm where he imagines the bone had mended itself back together and he wonders idly if he’ll develop arthritis in it. He sets the spirit box on his thigh and rubs at one of the two break points.

Then, suddenly, Shane turns his head toward the doorway and Ryan freezes. He strains his ears, listening for anything, any sign of movement out in the hallway that would indicate that someone is out there. But he hears nothing. His body crawls with goosebumps.

After a moment, Shane looks back at him. The only light in the cell comes from their flashlights, making it hard to see much of anything beyond their halos of light. He watches as between one blink and the next, Shane’s eyes are solid black, and the next they’re back to normal. 

Some primitive sort of fear crawls up Ryan’s spine, making him rigid with it, unable to move, unable to look at the doorway of the cell. He’s fucking terrified suddenly of what might be standing there, watching them. His chest aches and he realizes that he hasn’t taken a breath since Shane first looked away. 

He takes a sharp inhale now, that burns as his chest expands. 

“Shane,” he says, his voice too loud in the small space. A hand wraps around his ankle and squeezes so hard that he can feel the bones grinding together. It’s grounding and comforting all at once.

Shane is technically between him and the doorway to the cell, between him and whatever is out there. In the back of his head he wonders how many times Shane has done this and he hasn’t ever realized it. How many times has Shane protected him from something he didn’t even know was there? How often has Shane warned something away from him or postured with some other paranormal entity for him?

Ryan resolves to ask him once they get the fuck off this island.

Shane’s thumb presses in against the bones of his ankle. He realizes abruptly, that while he is absolutely, pants-shittingly terrified of whatever it is that he can’t see, lingering so close by, that he is in no danger. If he was, Shane would take care of it, as he presumably always has. It can’t be _too_ bad, if Shane is telling him something is close, but not making any move to get them out of here or run whatever it is off.

He tries to relax, tries to breathe. Tries to ignore the shadows moving out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t want to look, but he can’t help himself. 

The doorway is dark and empty, aside from the camera tripod in the middle, but Ryan can feel that instinctual fear in the back of his teeth telling him that he’s being watched. He reaches for the spirit box but Shane nudges him with his knee and shakes his head minutely.

“Just talk.”

Ryan balks at him in the dark. “And say _what_?”

“What you usually say.”

“I don’t know what I usually say,” he hisses, feeling a little panicked. “Usually you say something insulting and I freak out while you roll around on pentagrams on the floor!”

Shane snorts, sitting upright. His hand curls around the bend of Ryan’s knee and holds on. “Ryan. I’m the scariest thing in this cell.”

There’s nothing overtly obvious about his words but Ryan knows he’s going to have to edit this footage by himself in his apartment. He’s still looking at Shane when his eyes flick toward the doorway again. Then without warning, the camera in the entrance to the cell tips over. 

Ryan nearly comes right out of his skin, shouting and scrambling to his feet, dropping his flashlight as he goes. Shane quickly pushes himself up and grabs onto him in the dark. He pinches his eyes shut and focuses on trying to calm his breathing down. He mostly manages to muffle himself with Shane’s shoulder. 

All he can think of is what a nightmare editing this sequence is going to be; he’ll leave in his screaming but edit out the panicked hugging, if it’s even visible. it’s certainly not his finest moment, but it won’t be the worst one that their fanbase has ever seen, either.

 

\--

 

Ryan is ridiculously relieved to be leaving the island, in the morning. It’s still misting rain, but Ryan doesn’t feel like sitting inside the ferry. He pulls his hood up and squints through the moisture on his glasses. Shane sits beside him, allowing Ryan to slump against his shoulder. He yawns loudly before resting his cheek against the top of Ryan’s head.

He hadn’t slept for shit last night, curled up in his sleeping bag next to Shane, closer than will probably look normal on camera. Shane’s fingers slotted through his own, warm enough to make his palm sweat. 

His hands shake a little now, jittery from lack of sleep and the abrupt release of tension in his nerves. The island gets smaller, but not by much, as they head back to the dock on the mainland. He can see how prisoners would have thought they could make the swim to freedom; though the water is still choppy enough that he can understand why they didn’t.

There’s a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, like maybe Shane is upset with him, even though he doesn’t outwardly seem so. He wants to hold out his open hand and see if Shane takes it, but their cameraman is sitting across from them and quite clearly filming. So Ryan fists his frozen hands and slides them into the pocket on the front of his hoodie. 

When they get home, Ryan pulls to a stop outside of Shane’s apartment building and puts the car in park. He feels tired and dirty, his hair coarse and stiff with dried saltwater, and he aches from his head to his feet. He just wants a shower and his bed. But he wouldn’t mind if Shane told him to come up. He isn’t entirely sure he wants to be alone, either.

Shane unbuckles his seatbelt and looks at him for a second before leaning over to kiss him.

It reminds him of their first kiss, on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. He reaches up to cup the side of Shane’s neck as he kisses back, not wanting to let go of the familiarity of the moment. Their foreheads press together for a moment before Shane breaks away.

“Evidence and chill, tonight?” Ryan asks as Shane grabs his backpack from the seat behind him.

“Wouldn’t miss it, baby.”

Ryan grins and Shane kisses him, once and then again, before he gets out of the car and heads inside. 

 

\--

 

“Okay, tell me that movement looks natural,” Ryan says, pointing to the ball of light circling around the onscreen image of Ryan during one of his solo moments in a solitary confinement cell.

Shane gestures aimlessly with his chopsticks. “It’s fucking dust, Ryan. Orbs aren’t real.”

“You said yourself, you aren’t omniscient.” Shane groans. “I’m just saying, what if there’s some shit out there that you don’t know what it is.”

“Like orbs?” Shane deadpans.

“Orbs could be energy!”

“Orbs are fucking dust motes and insects, Ryan!”

Ryan elbows him before angling his laptop back toward himself.

“I’m just saying it looks weird. It could be something you’re not familiar with. Just because you can see shit that I can’t doesn’t mean that I’m wrong about everything.”

“I didn’t say that,” Shane says, fighting to corner a piece of red pepper in his chicken.

“Can you use your—“ Ryan fumbles for the right words, “true sight, or whatever, to see it now?”

Shane shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Then you can’t disprove it.”

“Orbs aren’t real, Ryan; I promise you.”.

“It looks like it disappears into my body. Just admit that it could be _something_.”

Shane sighs heavily. “Fine, an orb, that I can’t conclusively prove to be dust, penetrated your body while you were alone in the dark.”

Ryan makes a face like he’s trying to spit something out and taps the spacebar to start the footage playing again. “Don’t say ‘penetrate’, you weirdo.”

They both watch the screen for a moment in silence, watching Ryan look around himself in the dark. Shane picks at his lo mein and Ryan waits.

“Hey, Ryan?”

“What?”

“Did you feel the orb penetrate you?”

“Fuck you,” Ryan says on a breath that borders between a sigh and a laugh.

 

\--

 

The link between himself and Shane works perfectly, but Ryan still has an unfair amount of sleepless nights. While the nightmares have abruptly stopped, it’s left his mind free to obsess over things he hadn’t been cognizant enough to worry about before. Every time he crawls into bed, it’s a tossup whether Ryan will sleep or spend the night staring at his ceiling, thinking about Shane. He’s half convinced that it’s the lack of overwhelming body heat on the other side of the bed, and the other half of him thinks he’s just _that_ gone on Shane that he doesn’t like sleeping without him anymore.

He misses sleeping like a normal human being. He also misses not being a total lovesick idiot.

One of those sleepless nights, he rolls over with a harsh sigh and grabs his phone, the light of it practically blinding in the darkness.

_You up?_

He doesn’t have to wait long for Shane’s response. _Yeah what’s going on?_

_Can’t sleep. You wanna go for a drive?_

_Sure._

_Be there in ten._ Ryan tosses his phone aside and gets up to look for a hoodie and his shoes.

It’s more like twenty minutes later, but Shane is waiting at the curb for him when Ryan slows to a stop, in front of his building. He looks soft and comfortable in a pair of sweats and a BuzzFeed crewneck; his hair is mussed and his eyes are tired. He’s probably full of shit when he said he was awake when Ryan texted him.

Still, he climbs in without complaint and just settles back with his knees bumping the dashboard, taking Ryan’s silence in stride.

They don’t drive far. Ryan knows without thinking about it that his destination is the beach. It’s late enough that there isn’t a single other car in the lot they pull into. Shane unbuckles and gets out when Ryan shuts the ignition off, stretching his arms above his head as he makes his way around to the front of the car. He waits there, one hand tucked into the pocket of his sleep pants, as Ryan climbs out.

The breeze is salty and cool, if a little strong, rustling the fronds of nearby palm trees. It’s soothing and it detracts from the fact that a dark, vacant parking lot is one of the creepiest places on the planet. 

Ryan comes around to the front of the car and leans against the hood. It’s hot under him but not so much so that it’s uncomfortable. Shane sits beside him and folds his arms against his chest. The sound of the waves is loud and clear in the darkness in front of them. It’s a soothing, comforting sound, one that almost makes him sleepy. He successfully kills a yawn by tipping his head back to stare up at the sky. The light pollution isn’t as bad as people seem to think it is; Ryan can see stars through the breaks in the cloud cover. He counts eleven before he yawns anyway. He’s going to be exhausted again tomorrow.

“Come here,” Shane says quietly, putting an arm around his shoulders and pulling him in. He’s instantly warmer, even with the constant breeze moving in off the ocean.

Ryan loses track of the minutes crawling by, his eyelids beginning to feel heavier. He sighs, sinking into Shane’s side. He could fall asleep right here, just like this, sitting upright, with his car keys digging into his thigh and Shane’s fingertips brushing back and forth against his arm.

They’re both quiet for a while; even the sound of their breath is lost to the gentle crash of waves breaking along the shore. Shane waits him out and eventually the words come to Ryan. It’s surprisingly easy to say them.

“I think I’m in love with you.”

Shane’s arm around him tightens for a moment, and then his hand is coming up to the side of Ryan’s head. He leans over to press a kiss to Ryan’s hair and then sets his forehead against Ryan’s temple. His breath is warm against Ryan’s cheek as they both breathe in the ensuing silence.

One of Shane’s giant hands touches his jaw and Ryan turns toward him with the slightest bit of pressure. He kisses Shane, hot and deep, feeling the scrape of his stubble against his lips, until his jaw aches and he thinks there might actually be spit rolling down his chin. He’s breathing heavily when Shane pulls back, running his tongue over his bottom lip and following it with his teeth. Ryan is definitely a little bit hard and he wants Shane to touch him. He wants to touch Shane.

“Come back to my place,” Ryan murmurs, his voice thick in the back of his throat. 

Shane studies him, his lips wet and parted, just enough that Ryan can see the faint glint of his teeth behind them. He swallows and drops his hand to Ryan’s thigh, squeezing gently. Ryan tips his head forward and kisses Shane again, mostly getting his bottom lip, which he gives a slow, hard suck. Shane groans and drops his head, nudging Ryan up and into another, longer kiss. 

No other kiss that Ryan has had has ever felt like this before. It practically has him swooning into Shane, Ryan’s nose pressed so hard to his cheek that he’s having trouble breathing; it’s hotter than hell.

Ryan pulls abruptly out of the kiss to snort at the thought. 

Shane wipes at his own mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

“That’s hot,” Ryan says, still feeling a little giddy with the lack of oxygen. 

“You slobber like a great dane.”

“You weren’t complaining a second ago.”

“It’s a little hard to do anything when someone’s trying to choke you with their tongue.”

Ryan shoves him a little and Shane grins. “I’m a good kisser.” Shane lifts an eyebrow at him. “I’ve never had a complaint.”

“I’m not complaining. I’m just saying, your tongue is like a boa constrictor.”

“So I slobber like a dog and my tongue is like a snake,” Ryan says, holding up a finger for each point.

“I’m into it,” Shane says with a shrug. “Animal magnetism and all that jazz.”

“Jazz it.”

Shane laughs, a little too loud for the quiet surrounding them, but it makes his eyes scrunch up and Ryan just wants to kiss him again. 

After a moment, Shane lifts both of his hands to frame Ryan’s jaw, his thumbs stroking slow circles over the ridges of his cheekbones. Even in the dark, there’s something so intense in those eyes that Ryan almost has to look away; he fights with himself to maintain Shane’s gaze.

“Where did you come from?” Shane asks, seemingly to himself, which is a good thing because Ryan doesn’t know what to say to that. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever have this.”

Ryan has a flurry of embarrassing emotion at the soft look in Shane’s eyes and the gentleness of his touch, his words. He bites his lip and shakes his head. 

“You deserve to be happy, dude.”

“Dude,” Shane repeats with a little grin.

“Fuck you, you’re making me emotional,” Ryan says, pushing Shane’s hands off and looking away from him, out at the black pitch of the horizon.

Shane just hums a little and presses his hand to the small of Ryan’s back. They’re quiet again, for a bit. Ryan is starting to get genuinely tired and he’s thinking about telling Shane he’s ready to call it a night. Instead he says, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

There are a thousand serious questions that Ryan would like to have an answer to, but instead of potentially spoiling the atmosphere between them, he voices one that he hopes is less serious.

“Do you pick your Ruining History stories because they’re events that you were involved in?”

A proud look falls over Shane’s face as he smiles at Ryan. “I knew you’d ask me that sooner or later.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

Shane pushes himself up off the hood of the car and wipes his hands on his thighs. “That invite still open?”

“You’re not getting in my car, let alone my bed, until you tell me if you were in a sex cult with Ben Franklin.”

Shane laughs and comes to stand in front of him, tipping Ryan’s head back with both hands and looking at him. A small part of Ryan still thinks that he’s absolutely batshit crazy to trust Shane, knowing what he is. But it’s easily snuffed out when Shane is looking at him so fondly. 

“I like to look, more than I like to touch,” Shane says.

“And that means?”

“It means that I prefer to watch things go to shit rather than cause them to.”

“So you’re just a fuckin’ exhibitionist, then?”

“Ehh,” Shane says, tipping his head from side to side. “I don’t really get off on it.” Ryan keeps his eyes open as Shane leans in to kiss him. When Ryan doesn’t close them, Shane pulls back abruptly. “Don’t do that, it’s fucking weird.”

Ryan pushes himself up to his feet and pulls his keys from his pocket. “You don’t have the most fair and balanced scale of what’s weird and what’s not.”

Shane grabs his wrist when he makes a move toward his side of the car.

“I like chaos. And I’m drawn to fear.” 

Ryan goes still, letting Shane hold him by his wrist; he nods a little. “Explains why you like me,” he offers with a little, self-deprecating laugh.

“I liked you way before I ever felt your fear. I’m saying that I’m drawn to war.” He pauses there and Ryan feels like he’s lagging behind on finding his meaning.

“Like... a Gallic War?”

“Bingo, baby.”

Ryan huffs a breath, staring at Shane in something like awe as he lets go of his wrist and goes around to the passenger side door. He folds his arms against the roof of the car and watches Ryan over it.

“So, your place still on the table?”

Ryan had a lot more in mind than just going home and going to sleep when he made that offer. But looking at Shane, now, he just wants to crawl into bed and fall asleep beside him. Ryan rubs at his face and pulls open his door.

“Yeah,” is all he can think to say. Shane smiles at him anyway.

 

\--

 

All things considered, Ryan thinks that he and Shane have been pretty discreet about this thing between them. It’s been mostly at Ryan’s behest, because Shane is an actual demon possessing a dead body and sometimes that fact creeps in and fucks Ryan’s headspace up for a minute or two. He’s done more than his fair share of overthinking it.

Shane is Shane and he always has been. Ryan has always known Shane, as he is, and Shane—or what people believe Shane to be—has always been the demon. 

If someone had asked him last year, or even a couple of months ago, if he would have considered any sort of demon being docile, or capable of things like friendship and love, he would have said _fuck no._ Never. Not in a million years. 

Shane doesn’t even seem to be particularly evil with his past exploits. While he doesn’t volunteer many stories, whenever Ryan asks him about anything, Shane will tell him. Honest and candid, and never in a way that downplays what he is or the things that he’s done. He seems to have taken a mostly hands-off sort of approach to much of his existence, drawn to negativity, but preferring to watch rather than take part.

Ryan doesn’t fucking get it, and if he thinks about it too much, it makes his head hurt and something behind his sternum pulse. All of the logical parts of him keep telling him that this is a poor life choice. But every hopeless and sappy inch of his heart tells him that this is okay.

He was falling for Shane before he knew what he was, and he’s still falling now. He doesn’t want to talk himself out of something good just because he’s a little bit scared of it. 

He’s tired of being afraid.

It’s Friday night and they’re out with their coworkers, celebrating the end of another week. Ryan and Shane don’t have to leave until Sunday to film the last episode of Unsolved, and life is good. Ryan dances with Daysha and Jen, and does so many shots that he’s reminded of the night they drank before the IV hangover cure. He’s practically having war flashbacks by the time he switches to water. But he’s drunk and happy and he dances with the girls, and then with Shane.

Neither one of them is particularly coordinated, but Ryan laughs until he’s hoarse at Shane’s imitation of the flailing, inflatable tube person outside of a car dealership on the dance floor.

“You’re a fucking train wreck,” Ryan shouts over the music.

“And you are drunk off your ass,” Shane says directly into his ear. 

Ryan nods, feeling the scrape of Shane’s stubble against his cheek. He turns his head slightly and bites his jaw, dragging his tongue against the rough grain of his facial hair. Shane’s laugh is sharp and surprised; the hands on his sides dig in suddenly, making Ryan jerk and let go. He hates being ticklish. 

“Dick,” he says, tossing his arm around Shane’s stupidly broad shoulders. He has to reach for it, but Shane stays bent over like the polite giant that he is, allowing Ryan to cling to him.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to take me home with you.”

“Might be. Is it working?” Ryan asks, face feeling flushed and hot, even though he’s speaking more to Shane’s throat than his face. The hands on his hips pull him incrementally closer. Ryan can’t imagine the picture they’re making to their coworkers right now. 

Fuck it, he thinks, let them look. Let them watch. He doesn’t care.

Shane hums right up against his ear again, making Ryan shudder. He lifts his hand to palm Shane’s cheek, rubbing it back and forth to feel the prickle of his stubble against his skin.

“I’m afraid you’ve fallen for my trap. The inflatable tube man move is my mating dance.”

Ryan laughs again. “You’re fuckin’ crazy.”

“Crazy for you, baby!”

The words strike him hard, put him back on that beach in Santa Monica. He doesn’t want to let go of Shane, and he pulls him in closer until there’s scarcely room to breathe between them. He presses his forehead to Shane’s collarbone and smiles until his face hurts. 

He feels lighter than air when Shane’s arms wrap around him, pulling him close and practically nuzzling against the side of his head. He laughs again, even though his throat hurts. Shane is so hot and so solid; Ryan wants to crawl inside of him, or something. 

Fuck, he’s drunk.

They don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow, and Ryan is floating on his buzz, happy, settled under the familiar weight of Shane’s arm around his shoulders, on the ride home. His entire body warm and tired, legs exhausted and shaky when Shane pulls him out of the Uber and waves, thanking the driver. 

Ryan lets himself be lead, half-carried into Shane’s apartment. He’s way drunker than Shane, who barely even seems buzzed. He staggers into the doorframe while Shane gets his keys out of his pocket. 

“Hold on there, buckaroo,” Shane says, grabbing hold of his bicep to keep him from tumbling over. The grip is ironclad, but not painful. He wonders just how strong Shane really is. Ryan leans backward on purpose, seeing if Shane will hold onto him or if they’ll both go tumbling down to the floor. Shane laughs but doesn’t move more than to push the door open.

“Did you just call me _buckaroo? _” Ryan asks as Shane leads him over the threshold.__

__“Yep.”_ _

__Ryan doesn’t remember the walk to Shane’s bedroom. He doesn’t remember Shane pulling off his shoes, or stripping him down to his boxers and t-shirt. He doesn’t remember getting under the covers or where the bottle of water tucked up against his pillow came from. He settles into the blankets that make up the nest of Shane’s bed, and closes his eyes._ _

__When the bed dips, he glances over to see Shane messing with his phone; probably tweeting something weird. Ryan just looks at him, the careful tousle of his hair, the sharp profile of his nose, the way he blows out a breath before locking his phone and setting it down to charge._ _

__Shane’s pillows are softer than his own and his sheets smell freshly washed. Ryan has to fight to keep his eyes open as he burrows in and makes himself comfortable._ _

__“Do you even need to sleep?” he asks._ _

__Shane folds his glasses and sets them beside his phone before he moves to lay down. “No, but I like to.”_ _

__“The glasses?”_ _

__“I like ‘em.”_ _

__Ryan closes his eyes as Shane shuts off the bedside lamp and plunges the room into darkness. “Kinda like my fear,” he mumbles, half of it lost to the pillow. His mouth feels like it’s full of cotton balls._ _

__Fingers trace over his brow, pushing his sweat-dried hair back off of his forehead._ _

__“Delicious but unnecessary to my survival.”_ _

__Ryan merely hums into the pillow, his body completely relaxed under Shane’s gentle touch. In this moment, he doesn’t know how this thing between them could possibly be bad. He doesn’t want anything else._ _

__“Go to sleep,” Shane tells him, quietly._ _

__He doesn’t know if he responds out loud or if it’s just in his head. Either way, he passes out soon after._ _

__

__\--_ _

__

__“Tell me about the next place,” Shane says the next day when Ryan has recovered enough to make the walk from the bed to the couch without staggering into a wall._ _

__Shane had just watched him, with his too-long legs folded up on the chaise end of the couch, waggling his magic fingers at Ryan until he’d groaned and stumbled blearily toward him. It had instantly been worth the pain for the relief that Shane had granted him._ _

__For being a self-proclaimed not great healer, Shane always seems to get the job done, for Ryan._ _

__Now, Ryan trades his coffee mug for his phone to pull up his notes to read to Shane. They don’t usually discuss the locations much beforehand. Either Shane doesn’t give enough of a shit about where they’re going to ask many probing questions, or he likes to have Ryan fill him in on the history once they’re already sitting in the location. Ryan nudges his glasses up with the side of his hand and clears his throat. When he looks at Shane, he’s got his elbow on his thigh and his chin in his hand, watching Ryan._ _

__“Okay, so,” Ryan starts, “this place is called Franklin Castle, and it has at least six documented deaths in the house. Four children—“_ _

__“Is this one demons?”_ _

__“And—what?”_ _

__“We haven’t done a demon episode this season. Is this it?”_ _

__Ryan’s brow furrows as he looks down at his phone. “I don’t think so. Why? _Is_ it demons?”_ _

__“I don’t know, that’s why I asked.”_ _

__Ryan stares at the notes in his phone until the screen dims and he wakes it idly with his thumb. A series of seemingly huge questions floods his mind, and he wonders suddenly how these thoughts never occurred to him before. He looks at Shane._ _

__“How strong are you? In reference to… other demons.” He hates even saying the words. He hasn’t thought about demons outside of Shane in a lot longer than he cares to mention. He’s had tunnel vision, the past couple of weeks and he knows it._ _

__Shane offers him a half-assed shrug. “I’m strong,” is all he says._ _

__Ryan sets his phone aside. “Really? That’s a pretty broad scale. You could be saying you’re stronger than a newborn kitten or you could be saying you’re stronger than fuckin’ Thor.”_ _

__“I don’t know what you would consider strong.”_ _

__“I want to know what _you_ consider strong.”_ _

__Shane takes a breath, like he’s going to speak, then pauses and lets it out slowly. Ryan gives him the time and silence to think, even though he’s practically bursting at the seams to hear the answer. He almost wants to shake it out of him._ _

__“I…” Shane starts and trails off, looking down at the where his hand rests on his own drawn up knee. He clicks his teeth together a couple of times and takes another breath. “I’m strong,” he says again, his voice quiet but serious; he meets Ryan’s eyes._ _

__“Seriously? Come on, Shane.”_ _

__“There is nothing that I can’t or won’t protect you from.”_ _

__“That’s a bullshit non-answer.” Shane shrugs again and Ryan wants to shove him off the couch. “Are you being a dick on purpose?”_ _

__“I think it’s one of those things we’re not supposed to talk about.”_ _

__That makes Ryan all but freeze in place. Since the day at the Pier, Shane has been upfront with everything Ryan has asked him, not holding back or shielding him from the truth of things. It’s one of the biggest reasons that Ryan has stayed and let Shane stay; that honesty has been everything._ _

__Now Ryan has to decide if he should push Shane on it or not. If Shane is withholding from him, then it’s highly likely that it’s for his own safety or the wellbeing of his eternal soul or something. But the investigator in Ryan wants to demand answers. He wants to know whatever it is that Shane doesn’t think he needs to hear._ _

__“Ryan,” Shane says, snapping him back to attention. “Trust me.”_ _

__“Fuck you,” Ryan says without any heat._ _

__Shane’s face melts into a grin. “If you play your cards right.”_ _

__“Please. I’m playing poker and you’re over there playing go fish.”_ _

__Shane snorts a quiet laugh. “I don’t even know what that means.”_ _

__“It means you’re gonna be playing fuckin’ solitaire.”_ _

__Shane laughs outright and it makes Ryan laugh. He doesn’t resist when Shane says, “Come here,” and pulls at him until they’re stretched out together on the couch, with Shane propped up on one elbow over him. Ryan reaches up to pull Shane down but his hand is caught and Shane turns his head to press a kiss to the heel of it._ _

__Ryan shakes free of his grip and takes hold of the back of his neck. “Just fucking kiss me, already.”_ _

__“If you insist,” Shane says, letting Ryan pull him in._ _

__Ryan meets him halfway, lifting his head off the cushion to bring their mouths together, hard. Shane follows him down, holding his neck in one hand that makes its way down his chest to settle over his heart, thumb rubbing slowly over his nipple until it starts to harden. Ryan huffs a breath out his nose and sides his fingers into Shane’s hair, pulling him closer. He’s physically so hot that Ryan can even feel it through the tongue in his mouth. He’s heavy and solid, and so goddamn _big_ ; Ryan feels completely surrounded when Shane shifts, pinning one of his legs to the couch with his own, and pressing him down into the cushions. Ryan groans, his hips jerking when Shane pulls at his hair, tipping his head to the side to kiss him deeper. Shane’s tongue slides against his own, slow and wet, and _fuck_ every kiss with him is fucking incredible._ _

__Ryan’s just trying to breathe as Shane shifts against his side, pulling him closer with a hand on the back of his head. The sound and feel of their stubble scraping sends shivers down Ryan’s spine, making his skin prickle with goosebumps. His dick is starting to fatten up against his thigh. He tries to turn onto his side because he wants to rub up against Shane, but the hand on his chest drops to his hip and stops him; pressing him down against the couch cushion._ _

__“Shane, come on,” Ryan whispers hoarsely when they break apart. Ryan’s breathing hard, even as he takes Shane by the back of the neck and pulls him into another kiss._ _

__“Fuck, Ryan,” Shane mumbles against his mouth before kissing him back. The hand at his hip moves to the button of his jeans and fumbles it open._ _

__Ryan’s mind whites out, his stomach jumping, as Shane tugs his zipper down and pauses with his hand there, on Ryan’s low belly. His fingertips rest on the elastic of his boxer-briefs, his thumb rubbing at the line of hair trailing down from his navel._ _

__“Oh my god,” he rasps, pinching his eyes shut._ _

__“Is this okay?” Shane asks, his voice a perfect, low rumble; his lips brush Ryan’s as he speaks._ _

__Ryan nods a little frantically, and Shane pushes his hand in, over the tight material of his boxers._ _

__Shane’s fingers curl around his dick as he licks into Ryan’s mouth. He groans out a noise of frustration when he tries to move his hand. Their lips part with an audible, wet sound, and Shane presses their foreheads together, noses bumping._ _

__“Fuck these jeans. Why do you wear them so _tight?_ ”_ _

__The laugh Ryan exhales into Shane’s mouth is a little hysterical sounding. “You’re one to fuckin’ talk.”_ _

__“I don’t have any trouble getting my dick out of my pants,” Shane tells him, pushing himself up onto his elbow, and then upright._ _

__Ryan feels cold and exposed as Shane pulls away from him; irrationally feeling like he wants to cover himself up. Even though he is completely on board with this, it’s still new and slightly frightening territory. Ryan lifts his hips when Shane curls his fingers in his waistband and tugs his jeans down his thighs. They don’t even clear his knees before Shane is back on him, tipping his head up with a warm hand on his chin, and kissing him hot and open-mouthed._ _

__That same hand drops to his dick again, hard and straining the fabric of his boxers. Shane’s finger finds the head of his cock and rubs it in hard, devastating little circles until Ryan’s thighs are shaking. He presses his heated face against Shane’s neck and grips the bend of his elbow._ _

__“Oh, jesus,” Ryan gasps shakily as the fabric under Shane’s finger dampens with precome. Shane starts to say something but Ryan cuts him off before he can even get started saying whatever smug thing he’s come up with. “Fuckin’—just fucking touch me. Don’t make me come in my underwear like a fucking teenager.”_ _

__Shane exhales sharply against his hair and nudges Ryan’s face up with his other hand, kissing him. Ryan lets go of Shane to help shove his boxers down to mid-thigh, and then Shane’s huge hand is wrapping around his cock. Ryan’s brain shorts out._ _

__Fuck, he’s having sex with Shane._ _

__It doesn’t feel like this should be okay; it feels like it should be weird. Shane is his friend, his coworker, and a fucking demon._ _

__But Shane is also his boyfriend, and Ryan is so fucking gone on him and the touch of his hand, right now, that he feels like he’s about to come right out of his skin. Something that makes his heart clench like this does can’t be a bad thing._ _

__He tries to kiss Shane back, but he’s mostly just panting against his open mouth. Shane doesn’t seem to mind, though; he makes encouraging sounds as his hand twists around Ryan’s dick, tugging at him expertly and just a little too dry. He doesn’t think he’s gotten off on just a handjob since he was seventeen, but he feels hot under his skin, his belly pulsing with arousal, and he is definitely going to come if Shane keeps it up._ _

__Ryan’s stomach muscles tighten, his feet digging into the couch cushions as he pushes up into Shane’s hand. He’s going to come. He’s going to come so fast. He’s about to embarrass himself by coming all over Shane’s fingers after a three minute, dry handjob. He grits his teeth and tries to hold off, forcing himself to focus on the press of Shane’s body against his side, the exchange of air between them, where their lips brush continuously, how _good_ Shane smells._ _

__He really should reach down and return the favor, but he can’t manage to unlock the death grip that his fingers have on Shane’s bicep and shirt._ _

__It takes moment to realize that Shane is speaking to him, murmuring against his open mouth. The bristle of his facial hair scratches at Ryan’s lips and it sends little sparks through his groin, pulling the bowstring there tighter, pushing him closer. He clings harder to Shane, his toes curling against the mounting pressure inside of him._ _

__“You have no idea what you look like, right now.”_ _

__Ryan gasps as he laughs. “Probably fuckin’—like some teenager getting his dick touched for the first time. Stop looking at me. Close your fucking eyes, you creep.”_ _

__Shane laughs, pulling back further even as Ryan wraps his arms around his neck, trying to hold him in place. He cracks his eyes open to find Shane watching him._ _

__Ryan tries to hide his face, with a groan. “Don’t be weird. I’m about to come all over you; don’t make it fucking weird.”_ _

__He fumbles a hand up to cover Shane’s eyes, listening to his surprised laugh. The hand on the back of his head pulls him closer, fingers pressing against the sweaty hair at the nape of his neck. The touch is gentle and shockingly intimate; Shane kisses him, soft and chaste._ _

__“You better come. My hand is gonna chafe soon, if you don’t.”_ _

__Shane turns his head and bites his cheek, making Ryan gasp, his entire body seizing up as he spurts over Shane’s hand. Ryan’s hips jolt upward and Shane turns into him further, holding him as he jerks through his orgasm._ _

__“Oh, jesus fuck. _Shane_.”_ _

__The hand on the back of his neck tightens to the point of pain as Shane tugs him in, letting Ryan bury his face in his neck, gasping and shaking._ _

__Ryan comes so hard he thinks he actually blacks out for a second. When he opens his eyes again, he’s lying flat on the couch with his boxers and pants pulled back up, still open at the zipper. Shane is watching him with satisfied eyes, sucking on his index finger, like he’s just finished licking his hand clean._ _

__Ryan throws his arm over his face, hiding in the crook of his elbow. After a minute, Shane settles down against his side again, resuming his position with his cheek propped up in his palm. There’s sweat drying on Ryan’s face and at the roots of his hair and the bends of his knees; he feels kind of disgusting but perfectly sated._ _

__That describes a few aspects of his relationship with Shane, pretty accurately._ _

__He lifts his arm to peek up at Shane, who is still staring at him. He lowers his arm again. “Creep,” he mutters._ _

__“You should be nicer to the guy who just made you come so hard you passed out.”_ _

__“I didn’t _pass out_ ,” Ryan says, raising his arm again. _ _

__Shane takes hold of his elbow and pins his arm to the couch. “You kinda passed out.”_ _

__“I blacked out.”_ _

__“What’s the difference?”_ _

__“There’s plenty of—“ Shane cuts him off by kissing him._ _

__Ryan tastes his own come in Shane’s mouth, which is kind of gross, but he ignores it, because complaining about that would be pretty shitty of him. Instead, he just kisses Shane back until his jaw aches and his tongue actually starts getting tired. He breaks the kiss to breathe, which Shane clearly doesn’t need to do, even though he goes through the motions of making it look like he does. There’s still so much about Shane that he wants to know, questions he wants to ask._ _

__Later, though, he thinks as he drops his hand to Shane’s belt._ _

__“You want me to?” he asks._ _

__Shane’s tongue runs across his bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth. “Do you want to?”_ _

__“Only if you want to.”_ _

__Ryan has never touched a dick that isn’t attached to him, hasn’t ever met a guy that ever really made him want to; but the idea of touching Shane feels like something he _needs_._ _

__“I might be really bad at this,” he tells Shane as he pulls open his belt._ _

__“I’m sure you’ve had tons of practice.”_ _

__“Only with myself,” Ryan says, a second before the comment clicks. “Oh, you ass.”_ _

__Shane laughs in the way that makes his eyes scrunch up and Ryan has a hard time being grumpy with him when he looks that fucking cute. He sticks his hand down the front of Shane’s jeans—which are hardly less tight than his own—and takes hold of his cock. Shane lets out a shuddery sigh and pulls him closer, practically nuzzling into his hair. Ryan just tries to make it good for him._ _

__

__\--_ _

__

__“This is a fucking nightmare house.” Ryan says, turning in a circle at the second floor landing. His flashlight jumps over exposed beams and hanging extension cords. There are dark, gaping doorways every which way he looks, and it feels constantly like someone is watching him. Everything about this house has the creep factor dialed up to eleven. It looks like a horror movie set, or a haunted house, or like someone found out every single thing he’s afraid of and built and decorated a house with that as the aesthetic._ _

__Shane finishes climbing the creaking stairs, looking at the screen of the camera he’s holding. “It could certainly use a little HGTV love.”_ _

__“There aren’t enough Home Depots in the world to save this place; it’s literally the house from _Resident Evil VII_.”_ _

__Something behind Ryan shifts, making the floorboards groan and he spins around to look so quickly that he almost loses his balance. Shane’s hand on his back keeps him upright, but his heart is still pounding in his throat, like it’s trying to escape._ _

__“Did you hear that?”_ _

__Nothing shows on the display of the thermal camera he’s holding but something is there, just out of sight, watching them. He can feel it._ _

__“It’s an old building, Ryan.”_ _

__“Something _moved_.”_ _

__“This house looks like it’s held together with thoughts and prayers; I bet a lot of things in here are moving.”_ _

__Ryan lowers his camera. The rest of the crew are downstairs, leaving him and Shane alone on the second floor. He keeps his voice down, anyway, when he speaks._ _

__“Is there anything here?”_ _

__Shane’s face is heavily shadowed, making him look astoundingly creepy in the low light. He looks at Ryan for a moment before he thumbs the button to turn his camera off. Without a word, he nods, and Ryan feels every hair on his body stand on end. He wants to head right back down that creepy staircase and keep on walking until he’s outside on the front walk._ _

__“Fuck,” he breathes. Shane’s hand on his back pushes up under his sweater to touch bare skin._ _

__“Nothing can hurt you.”_ _

__“Does something _want_ to?” Shane shakes his head. Ryan breathes in a deep, shaky breath and then coughs it out. “I think the air in here is at least forty percent asbestos.”_ _

__Shane laughs quietly before nodding his head toward Ryan’s hand. “Turn the camera off,” he says. Ryan does so without questioning it._ _

__The wind outside is howling, making the building shudder and groan, every bit of wood creaking. But it seems silent, somehow, as Shane’s sweaty hand moves across the small of his back to his side. Ryan exhales quietly, gripping his flashlight so hard that his hand starts to shake._ _

__Shane raises the hand not holding the camera and points toward the furthest doorway._ _

__“Aim your flashlight.”_ _

__“Are you fucking kidding me?”_ _

__“Ryan,” Shane stresses. “Just _look_.”_ _

__Ryan hesitates. “What is it?”_ _

__Shane sighs near his ear and reaches for the hand Ryan has his flashlight clenched in, drawing it up. Ryan’s first instinct is to close his eyes and it’s a hard one to fight off._ _

__Even with how badly he does want to see the proof in front of him, he still doesn’t want to look._ _

__Ryan takes a couple of slow breaths, trying to calm the out of control pace of his heart before he strokes out, and opens his eyes._ _

__At first, he thinks Shane is just fucking with him. The area that his flashlight illuminates shows nothing but bare drywall, cracked and dirty, and exposed wall studs, covered in cobwebs. He sees nothing. Ryan considers throwing his elbow into Shane’s ribs for screwing with him when he’s already on edge._ _

__Still, the feeling of being watched presses on him like a physical thing and he can’t deny the sensation._ _

__“I don’t see anything.”_ _

__Shane makes a quiet noise, like he’s perplexed, and shifts his footing. Again, he points his finger and traces a shape in the air. It looks like a fucking blob to Ryan, and even when he squints, he can’t convince himself that he’s actually seeing anything._ _

__When he looks over his shoulder at Shane, his eyes are black._ _

__“Fuck, that’s creepy,” he whispers._ _

__Shane glances at him, his mouth opening like he’s going to say something, but just looks back toward the doorway. “It’s gone.” He drops his hand._ _

__“What was it?”_ _

__“Spirit,” Shane says, still keeping his voice low. “There are a couple here but nothing negative.”_ _

__“Where did it go?”_ _

__“Down,” is all Shane tells him._ _

__“Down where?”_ _

__“Just… down.”_ _

__“The fuck does that mean?”_ _

__Shane doesn’t respond. The hand on his back slips out from under his shirt and Ryan feels a little bereft. Shane turns and heads into another room, leaving Ryan to follow. They turn their cameras back on and prowl around for a bit. Even knowing that nothing in the house is necessarily bad doesn’t really do much to calm Ryan’s nerves._ _

__Every creak and groan of the house around them keeps him on edge. He’s still looking for _something_ , even though he’s more than a little afraid of what he might see._ _

__“I wish I could see what you see,” he says as they ascend the stairs to the attic. “Borrow your eyes, for a minute.”_ _

__“I feel like I should sing that _Jeepers Creepers_ song.”_ _

__Ryan huffs a laugh, pausing at the top of the stairs to look at whatever his flashlight lands on. “Please don’t sing.”_ _

__“I can’t help it, Ry, I got the music in me,” he says, holding his arms out and giving his best jazz hands._ _

__“You’re gonna break my camera and then you’re gonna need to Jeepers Creepers yourself a new hand.”_ _

__Shane scoffs, looking up at the rafters, drawing Ryan’s gaze up as well. There is nothing but cobwebs above them, but Ryan still closes the distance between himself and Shane. This house is serious nightmare fodder._ _

__“I might be able to,” Shane says._ _

__Ryan turns, careful of his footing. He doesn’t trust this floor, even if there are plywood boards set across the beams for them to walk on._ _

__“You might be able to what?”_ _

__“Share my sight with you. Through the link.”_ _

__“Seriously?” Ryan isn’t entirely sure that he’s ready for that, here._ _

__Shane nods, looking up at the ceiling as a strong gust of wind hits the side of the house and whistles through the rafters. “I’d have to practice, first. Not here. We can try it, back home, if you want.”_ _

__“Yeah, definitely.” To see what Shane sees would probably be slightly terrifying, but the thought of it is more thrilling than anything. If he could _see_ the spirits, maybe he could better understand them and why they’re still lingering. He shines his flashlight at Shane. “Spirit box?”_ _

__“Excuse me one second,” Shane says before he makes like he’s going to toss himself out the nearest window._ _

__Ryan laughs even as he grabs Shane’s sleeve with three fingers, the other two still holding the flashlight. “You’re not leaving me alone in the _Silent Hill_ house.”_ _

__Shane sighs dramatically and moves his hand to briefly squeeze Ryan’s. “Fine. If we must,” he says._ _

__Ryan’s head is starting to hurt a little, though, and he hesitates when he trades the thermal camera for the spirit box. He presses it between his hands until the edges dig into his skin. He looks at Shane._ _

__“Is there even any point to this?”_ _

__“I don’t think there’s a point to _any_ of this.”_ _

__Ryan drops his shoulders. “I’m serious. Is there even anything here we can communicate with?” He lifts the spirit box. “Does this even _work_?”_ _

__“Don’t ask me things like that.”_ _

__“Like what?”_ _

__“Things that will ruin this for you. You already know the truth behind a lot of things because of me, I’m not going to take the fun out of this for you, too.”_ _

__“But I _know_ the truth.”_ _

__“ _Exactly_ ,” Shane stresses. “There’s no point to any of this if I’m standing here giving you confirmation on every single thing. We talked about this, Ryan. We need to go on like before or this isn’t going to work.”_ _

__Ryan groans, reaching up to rub the back of his hand against his eye. “Forget it. I don’t want to fight about this while we’re standing in a haunted attic.”_ _

__“We’re not fighting. We’re just ruining any and all footage we could use while we’re up here.”_ _

__Ryan laughs, feeling most of the tension begin to drain out of him. The wind is still howling and the house is still creaking, and he and Shane are still standing in the middle of a total nightmare house. He shifts closer and Shane’s hand catches and squeezes his elbow in the dark._ _

__“Come on,” he says, nodding his head toward the spirit box. “Fire that bad boy up. Let’s discern some nonsense.”_ _

__Ryan hesitates, turning the spirit box in his hands, again. “Are you mad?”_ _

__“No.” Ryan glances up at him in the scant light; Shane shakes his head. “We’ll figure this out.”_ _

__He’s pretty sure that at least one of their cameras is going to contain footage of the kiss that Shane leans down to give him. He opens his mouth to Shane’s tongue, his lips warm, where Ryan’s have gone cold and chapped from his constant licking of them. Shane hooks his arm around his shoulders and pulls him closer, until their chests bump and Shane’s GoPro is digging into his ribcage._ _

__Ryan will deny to the death that he has to push up onto his tiptoes to kiss Shane back the that way he wants._ _

__“Our footage, tonight, is probably ten percent shots of dark hallways and ninety percent forbidden talk and us making out.”_ _

__Ryan snorts and his teeth knock against Shane’s, causing them to stumble apart a step, both of them groaning and rubbing at their mouths. Shane prods his bottom lip and then inspects his fingers. Before either of them can speak again, Shane’s head perks up and there is a sound like the top stair creaking and Ryan spins on his heel, kicking up a mini dust storm around his shoes._ _

__When he aims his flashlight, nothing is there, but a glance over his shoulder at Shane shows him a black-eyed stare. An instinctive fear settles itself in his spine, but the primitive part of his brain that still identifies Shane as a predator is easier to tramp down on than it should be. He swallows the lump forming in his throat and glances at the spirit box before he looks back at Shane, again._ _

__“We okay?”_ _

__Shane nods, lifting his camera at Ryan again. “We’re good.”_ _

__Ryan takes a breath, blowing it out slowly; Shane arches his eyebrows at him and Ryan nods once. He flicks the switch on the spirit box and the attic immediately fills with indiscernible static. Shane flinches and Ryan makes a mental note to ask him if the noise is more than just an irritant to him._ _

__For now, though, he focuses his attention on the darkened stairwell and asks a question he technically knows the answer to._ _

__“Is someone here, with us?”_ _

__Shane’s other hand settles on his back, out of sight of their cameras. And Ryan isn’t afraid._ _

**Author's Note:**

> I love and appreciate comments and kudos so much. Let me know what you think ❤

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] These are what they call hard feelings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16228238) by [Shmaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor)




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